Question

1. Humans are the only primate species that hosts two species of louse: head lice and pubic lice. The sister species of the pubic louse is the gorilla louse. The two lineages diverged 3 or 4 million years ago, when a gorilla louse switched hosts to colonize a hominin host. When the ancestral gorilla louse species speciated into two species (a gorilla louse and a hominin pubic louse), was this allopatric or sympatric speciation? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

There are four types of speciation

Sympatric,allopatric,parapatric anď peripatric.

The other three types of speciation involves the physical separation of two population of the same species,while sympathetic speciation does not.

Allopatric speciation occurs when a geographical barrier like a river,mountain or canyon separates members of a population.

Sympathetic speciation occurs when population of a species that share the same habitat become reproductively isolated from each other.This speciation phenomenon most commonly occurs through polyploidy,in which an offspring or group of offspring will be produced with twice the normal number of chromosomes.

In pubic lice sympatric speciation occurs.for eg,if two person mate each other.,the lice get an opportunity to switch human host and perhaps mate with the lice on other human host.Mating allows genes to flow through the louse species.

If what mating doesn't happen?So geographia isolation of lice species occurs which cause them to be reproductively isolated and hence separate species. And recently humans started removing pubic hairs,also causes reproductive isolation of lice species.